I have Premier Elements 11. A Pentium i7 computer with plenty of memory and hard drive space. I do not have a Nvidia video card and in any event the drivers for the AMD card in the computer are as of 2015. I have over 70,000 pictures and a couple of home videos, all family pictures. It takes a very long time for Photoshop to open and work. It is to the point that it is unusable. I have been thinking it is time upgrade the software but was wondering:

1) is this issue due to the large number of photos and therefore it will continue to happen with a newer version of Premier Elements

2) is there a better solution within the Adobe family. I do very basic adjustments to pictures, nothing fancy. I like the capability but really use more the organization function of the software.

When you first install the program, the Elements Organizer builds a library catalog of all of your media files -- a process that can take an hour or so or a couple of days, depending on the size of your catalog. 70,000 photos will take a long time for the program to build a library for!

However, once it's done your i7 will operate much faster. (Although I've never heard of a Pentium i7, so it's hard to say what kind of performance to expect. Do you know what model of processor you have?)

Likewise, when you first open Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements, it needs to install some basic components, which may take 10 minutes on a reasonably fast machine. After that, things should run very quickly on a well-tuned i7 Windows 10 system.

Once the program is done initializing and setting up your catalog, all three Elements program should run pretty quickly.

Versions 12 and later of the program are 64-bit, so you will definitely seem more efficient performance if you upgrade (assuming you're on a 64-bit operating system.)

But you shouldn't have to upgrade. As I said, the program needs to build your catalog and install some components. Assuming you've got plenty of free space (100 gigs is best) on your hard drive and that your computer is clean and well-tuned, this shouldn't take too long. 70,000 pictures is a lot of pictures though. It's not more than the program can handle, but it's a lot for the program to catalog.

I'd recommend being patient. You don't say which of the dozens of i7s out there you've got -- but there is no reason Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements shouldn't run very quickly on pretty much any i7 after they've finished installing their components.